Girl, Junior, Woman: Negotiating Childhood and Adolescence in the Female Temperance Press

This essay explores the gendered construction of girls and young women in temperance periodicals. Although temperance was the largest social reform movement of the nineteenth century, by the end of the century it faced a recruitment crisis. By examining the children’s and junior columns in the British Women’s Temperance Journal, the Women’s Signal, and Wings, we discover how these periodicals attracted new members into the movement and created spaces where girls and young women were trained in appropriate models of temperate femininity. This essay draws on Sally Mitchell’s The New Girl whilst considering the largely underexplored female temperance press.